


gathering the broken pieces back together

by helsinkibaby



Series: The District Dating Scene [4]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Comfort Sex, F/M, Romance, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 09:23:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16134368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: After Qasim’s death, Ellie can’t sleep.





	gathering the broken pieces back together

**Author's Note:**

> Theme: hurt/comfort  
> Prompt : Any, any/any, comfort sex  
> https://comment-fic.livejournal.com/890544.html?thread=106733744&style=mine#t106733744

Ellie lies on her back, staring up at the ceiling, her eyes wide open. She knows she should sleep but to do that, she'd have to close her eyes. 

And if she does that, she knows what she'll see. 

The walls of Qasim's office being rent apart by gunfire. Qasim's body hitting the floor, a pool of blood spreading rapidly around him. Her hands on his chest, trying to stanch the bleeding. The back of the ambulance with the paramedics doing everything they could to save Qasim. The antiseptic smell of the hospital, the sight of his blood on her hands, the red stark against the white porcelain of the bathroom sink as she tried to wash it off...

She shudders. 

Then she blinks as, beside her, the light snaps on. 

She turns her head, sees Nick turning towards her, lying on his side, his head propped up on his arm. “I can hear you thinking,” he says, trailing his other hand from her shoulder down to her elbow. “I guess I don’t have to ask what about.” 

Ellie grits her teeth against a sudden wave of tears. “I keep seeing him, lying there,” she says, her stomach turning. “The sound of the bullets...” She squeezes her eyes shut but just as she thought, the images are still there. 

And Qasim is still dead. 

Sweet, kind Qasim. A good man who didn’t deserve what had happened to him. A good man and a good friend who wanted to be more. Who could so easily have been more were it not for the fact that, by the time he asked Ellie out, she’d already started to fall for Nick, even if she hadn’t exactly realised it at the time. 

“Hey.” Nick’s hand is on her cheek, tilting her head towards him. “Come back.” 

She blinks her eyes open, focuses on the concern in Nick’s dark eyes. He hasn’t left her side since he arrived at the hospital and wrapped her in his arms like he was never going to let her go. She’d held on to him in much the same way, felt his shoulders tremble and when she’d pulled back to look in his eyes, she’d known how scared he’d been. “Tell me what I can do,” he says to her now. “Tell me what I can do to help you.” 

It’s on the tip of her tongue to say that there’s nothing he can do, that some wounds just run too deep, no matter how much he wants to help. But even as she opens her mouth, the word die on her tongue and she sees, like they belong to someone else, her hands lifting to cup his cheeks. Her thumbs sweep along his skin and he looks like he’s fighting hard to keep his eyes open. 

It’s a fight he loses when she leans forward and kisses him. 

Her arms wind around his neck and she presses herself closer to him before she shifts so that she's lying on her back again, pulling him with her so that he's lying mostly on top of her, one of his legs between hers. She closes her eyes again and this time, with the warm weight of his body against hers, it's a little easier to push away the thoughts of Qasim's office, of what had happened to him. 

His hand slides down her side and she shivers, arching into his touch. That's when he pulls away, rests his forehead against hers. He's breathing hard, they both are and he looks actually pained when he shakes his head. "Ellie, we can't..." 

Except they can and maybe they shouldn't but that doesn't change the fact that suddenly, that's all Ellie wants. 

"Please, Nick," she whispers, moving one arm between them, sliding it down his chest, down further, finding ample evidence of his desire. His eyes close as he inhales sharply and his jaw tenses. "Please." 

When his eyes open again, once more she can see the fear inside them that she saw at the hospital. The knowledge that, if she'd been standing an inch to the left or the right, if the spray of bullets had found different targets, the night could have had a very different, terrible outcome. She sees it and she feels it when he kisses her, when he pours all the fear and desperation into that kiss, when his hands move over her body like it's the only thing he wants to do for the rest of his life. 

With every kiss, every caress, the memory of the hard floor of Qasim's office, the feel of him bleeding in her arms begins to recede. Their mingled breaths, shallow and panting, the way he whispers her name, rough against the skin of her neck as he sinks inside her, makes her forget all about the sound of gunfire. The way his hips move with hers, gentle and slow, replaces the frantic twists and turns of the ambulance ride. And when pleasure coils in her stomach, ripples through her like a starburst, when she calls his name and he groans hers against her skin, she feels alive for the first time in hours. 

They kiss through the aftershocks, long and leisurely kisses that she can never get enough of and she stares up at him, runs her hand through his hair, down his neck. 

Then her voice breaks the silence. 

“I love you.” 

The words are out without her thinking about them, giving her no chance to stop them. For a second, they seem to hang frozen in the air between them, suspended in time and in that second she thinks of all the things that could go wrong. It’s too soon, she’s too emotional, too upset, he doesn’t feel the same...

But then his thumb moves across her cheek and there’s a look on his face that makes her believe everything is going to be all right. He exhales her name as he pulls her into his arms, rolls them so that he's on his back and she lets her head fall to his chest, trusting him to gather her broken pieces back together until she’s strong enough to do it herself. 

The last thing she registers before sleep finally claims her is his fingers running through her hair and his whispered words, "I love you too."


End file.
